


hero ball

by nahco3



Category: Basketball RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:31:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8887513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahco3/pseuds/nahco3
Summary: Russell in the aftermath.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [annatawa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/annatawa/gifts).



Russell gets another triple double and he still can’t sleep. He paces his hotel room, back and forth and back and forth, looking out at the gold and black lights of another anonymous city. Everywhere’s the same to him now: highways and airports, turndown service and maids asking him for selfies, meaningless bullshit and the same questions, over and over.

Everywhere but the court. He feels a spike of adrenaline when he looks left and sees an empty space, something between a pit in his stomach and a fire in his belly. The realization, heavier than ever, that it’s only him now. That this is his team, his responsibility, his city – something he can fight for and win. The problem is when it’s all over, when there’s nothing but ruin in his wake, he still can’t stop, looking for something to fight. Fighting himself, because that’s all he has left.

Used to be, when he couldn’t shake the game off, Kevin would fuck it out of him. Kevin, on top of him, gentler than he’d permit from anyone else. Holding him place, making Russell promises and spreading his legs, kissing him and kissing him, like Russell was all he’d ever wanted.

Russell turns away from the window, places both fists deliberately against the wall, clenching them until his nails bite into his palms. _Fuck._ He doesn’t allow himself to think like this, he can’t think like this anymore. His legs hurt, his reconstructed knee burning even through the haze of painkillers. But mostly he just wants to rip his heart out of chest.

He goes to the gym. Hotel gyms, another thing that’s the same everywhere, a comfortably numb and safe place. It’s empty, fluorescently lit. He turns on the TV, switches to the West Coast game on TNT (which thank fuck is the Lakers) and settles down onto a recumbent bicycle. Got to go easy on his knee, now that there’s no one left to fall back on.

He goes through the second half of the game, through the bullshit afterwards, until the TV switches over to infomercials and ads for phone sex hotlines. Everything’s quiet except for his heartbeat and his breath. When he stops, he can barely pull himself off the bike. He lets himself slump to the ground and just lie there, on the dirty hotel carpet. The nubs of it dig into his back and his arms and he’s too cold, his sweat drying on him.

He wonders if he can just sleep here, on the ground, numb and burnt out, until tomorrow morning. If the team could leave him like this, in stasis, until the next game, until the next triple double. He’s fine as long as he’s moving, as long as he doesn’t have to feel it for too long.

His knee is so stiff he has to lever himself up with his arms. Kevin, pulling him up easily, taking his weight with a laugh, resting his head just for a second against the top of Russell’s. Asking, “That’s all you got?”

_Don’t, don’t fucking do this._

He stands for a minute, just testing to see if his knee will hold, before he walks back to his room. He pulls an ice pack out of the mini-fridge, grabs another two painkillers from the bottle next to his bed. Swallows them dry.

If Kevin were here – _don’t_ – if Kevin were here, they’d both be sweaty and worn out, neither of them willing to drag themselves to shower. Kevin might murmur, “good job,” something quiet between just the two of them. Russell might press a kiss into Kevin’s arm, mutter back “you too,” and then bite him, gently, right over the place he’d kissed, because Russell never knew how to be soft that way Kevin did.

Swearing, Russell reaches for his phone, meaning to scroll through Instagram until he can sleep, to think about something else. But he opens his contacts instead, scrolls down to Kevin, opens their text thread.

Sitting there is the last thing Kevin ever said to him: **It’s the warriors. Sorry**

The utter fucking insufficiency of it makes Russell want to throw his phone across the room, still. It makes him want to get up in Kevin’s face and demand answers, makes him want to hold Kevin down and fuck him until he’s loose and vulnerable again and scream, demand, beg: _Why, what didn’t I have, what didn’t I give you, why wasn’t I enough for you, when you were everything for me?_

He can’t think about it, but he can’t stop thinking about it. It sits in him, somewhere dark and unreachable. His anger doesn’t touch it. The bright lights of the court, the red of the shot clock, they don’t get anywhere close to it. Kevin was the nice one, the soft one, the one without the killer instinct; but of the two of them, he’s the one who did this. The only person capable of doing this to Russell.

He shuts his phone off, turning over in bed, twisting his knee. It burns, a quick burst of pain he’s gotten used to. He tries to think of Kevin like that: something in him that grew weak and had to snap off and be sutured back together, stronger than before. But he can’t trust that. For so long, he thought Kevin was the best part of himself. His right hand, his best friend, his competitor, his only equal.

But Kevin didn’t. Didn’t think of him like that, didn’t want him like that, didn’t care enough to end it in person or even really end it. Russell knows that if he could bear asking for it, Kevin would still kiss him like it meant something, would still fuck him. But there’s no part of Russell that could survive Kevin again.

The thing about giving it up to someone is then he leaves and there’s nothing, just Russell – his guts and his muscles and his boiling rage and his broken heart. Just another empty hotel room, another triple double

**Author's Note:**

> happy yuletide! I hope you enjoy this. 
> 
> many thanks to my incredible beta reader.


End file.
